


If The Name Fits

by spitecentral



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (microagressions not hate crimes), Also featuring: Trans Girl Pidge; Demiguy Hunk; Demiguy Lance, Character Study, Everyone is Trans, Gen, Self-Acceptance, Trans Keith (Voltron), Trans Male Character, Trans Shiro (Voltron), Transphobia, but they're not in it very much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 09:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13144113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spitecentral/pseuds/spitecentral
Summary: Trans Guy Keith, from the moment he picks his name, to confidence.





	If The Name Fits

**Author's Note:**

> Written on Tumblr for Voltron Secret Santa, as a gift for @thaace. 
> 
> My first time writing a fic about being trans! I’m trans myself (nonbinary), but I’m still working through internalized transphobia, so this was very hard for me to write, which is why it’s so stiff (I tried to stylize it but I’m not sure how well I pulled it off). BUT! I’m very happy I got this done! So I’m happy with it and I hope it’s okay!
> 
> Warning: Transphobia in the form of microaggressions and general prejudice.

Keith was fourteen when he picked his name.

He was sitting upstairs while the other foster kids played outside, reading the list of names by the faint window light. It contained all the boy names he knew, though most of them had been striped through. First, he’d stripped the list to just the names starting with a K, then, he’d discarded all the ones that just didn’t feel right.

Finally, he had just three names left, and he’d been agonizing over them long enough that the snow outside had nearly doubled in size.

There was a knock on the door. Quickly, he scrambled to get his geography book on top of his list.

“Yes?” he called out, barely managing to keep his voice from shaking.

“There’s hot chocolate for you downstairs if you want,” his foster mom’s voice drifted through the door.

“Thanks, be there soon.”

“Don’t take too long.”

He heard her high heels clicking away and sighed in relief. He put the book away, and stared at the list, chewing on his lip. Finally, he closed his eyes and pricked a random name with his finger.

Keith.

Keith.

“Keith.”

He said it in a whisper, but grinned loudly.

Before Keith left to get his hot chocolate, he ripped the list up into a million pieces and threw them out of the window.

Just in case.

///

Keith was fifteen when he first heard about Takashi Shirogane.

He was in another foster home, third in four months, and his new foster father was talking about him at breakfast.

“There’s a transsexual astronaut now,” Richard said conversationally over his newspaper.

_Transgender_ , Keith corrected mentally. Gina hummed, more interested in the TV blaring the background, and Nathan, the other foster kid, didn’t even look up from his toast.

Seeing no one else was going to react, Keith slowly perked his head up. “Really?” he said, going for casual.

Richard nodded. “Yeah. She’s about to go on her fist mission. Apparently she won a court case that let her go with an all-male crew.”

Keith frowned. “If she’s a trans girl, why would she want to do that?”

“Trans girl? Is that a girl who wants to be a guy, or...?”

Keith repressed a sigh. “A girl born in a guy’s body,” he answered, which was not entirely accurate, but it’d be suspicious if he knew too much. Besides, it’s not like they’d get it anyway.

“Ah. No, she’s a guy born in a female body.”

“He,” Keith corrected. “If he’s a trans guy, you should use he.”

Richard shot him an annoyed look and rolled his eyes. “It. Whatever, I never know what to call those people.”

“It’s a real step forward for them,” Gina pitched in, “though I am worried about a girl being up in space, all alone with those men.”

“There’s been mixed sex crews before, though, and nothing happened,” Nathan pointed out.

Keith pushed his cereal away, not hungry anymore. “I’m going to school,” he announced, and he was out of the door.

But on his way to school, he stopped and bought the paper himself. He read the interview in one go.

When asked why he’d chosen to become an astronaut, Takashi Shirogane laughed. “The stars are a lot less judgmental than humans.”

Keith ripped out the article and put it in his pocket, grinning wildly.

///

Keith was sixteen when he got accepted by the Galaxy Garrison. He was also sixteen when he first met Takashi Shirogane, and sixteen when he first came out. Those things were not unrelated.

“I’m trans,” was the first thing out of his mouth when he met him, and immediately Keith wanted to die. He’d meant to just stop Shirogane in the hallway, introduce himself, maybe ask for an autograph, not fucking come out.

Shirogane lifted an eyebrow. “I’m guessing that’s not your name?”

Keith just stood there, paralyzed.

Shirogane smiled reassuringly. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m not going to out you.”

Keith finally unfroze, just to groan. “I swear that was not what I was going to say.”

“Yeah, I figured. So what _is_ your name?”

“Keith,” he said, tasting the name on his tongue. “I’m Keith. But don’t tell anyone else!”

“Of course not. I’m Takashi Shirogane,” the decorated fighter pilot, the first openly trans astronaut, held out his hand and smiled at Keith, “But you can call me Shiro.”

///

Keith was seventeen when he first came out. Properly, this time.

“I want to change my name and pronouns in the school database,” he said to Iverson, not quite looking him in the eyes, clamping his hands together behind his back in an attempt to keep them steady, “I’m trans.”

Iverson only missed one beat before replying: “Alright, cadet. What name and pronouns do you use?”

When Keith finally came out of Iverson’s office, he practically collapsed in Shiro’s arms.

“Whoa, easy. How’d it go?” Shiro asked, barely managing to catch him.

“Good. He just changed it, no complaining.”

“I told you he’d take it well!”

Shiro tightened his hug and swung Keith around the hall, ignoring his sputtering. “I’m so, so proud of you!”

Keith hugged him back and laughed. He was still too wound up to feel happy, but he was... relieved. He still had to worry about his classmates, but now that he’d make the first step, he felt like he could take more.

He laughed and sputtered as Shiro danced with him like he was a little kid, and felt relieved.

///

Keith was eighteen when he bought his first binder.

Shiro had given him the gift card for his birthday. “They were also my first binder, and they’re still the best I’ve tried,” he’d explained, and Keith had taken the gift card, feeling giddy even at the thought of buying.

“Still,” Shiro’d warned, “be careful. Binding isn’t entirely safe, and you need to make sure not to damage your ribs by wearing it for too long, or while sleeping, or while training.”

“I can’t wear it while training?” Keith asked, disappointed.

Shiro looked apologetic. “I fucked up my ribs for a month when I did it. It’s not worth it.”

A sly grin played on Keith’s lips.

Shiro stared at him, suspicious. “What did I say?”

“Fuck. You said fuck. Not putting up a very good example, huh, Mr. Role Model for Future Cadets?”

Shiro shoved Keith playfully. “Don’t tell Iverson or I’ll tell him about the time you snuck out to go joyriding.”

“Deal.”

A week later, his binder arrived, and when Keith stared in the mirror he’d honestly believed that everything would be okay, and that he’d be happy from now on.

A month later, Shiro left for Kerberos.

///

Keith was nineteen and fighting an intergalactic war in a team where no one was cis.

“I’m a girl,” Pidge said, and Lance nearly spit out his drink, and Keith just wondered how he hadn’t noticed that in the communal showers. Until it clicked. He never brought it up, but when he saw Pidge fidgeting with her hair and staring at her jeans with longing, he asked Allura to have a girl’s night with her. Allura didn’t question it, either, and the next time he saw Pidge, she was smiling, and had a new dress.

Hunk came out in a more traditional way, after being mistaken for a demigod on a new planet. “I mean, demiguy, demigod, it’s all the same, right?” he’d grinned.

Lance pouted. “Then why didn’t they pick me to worship?”

“Wait, both of you are demiguys?” Pidge said, before wincing when the concept of tact seemed to catch up with her.

Lance and Hunk nodded in unison. “Half guy, half nonbinary,” Hunk clarified.

“Kinda guy?” Lance made the universal so-so sign. “I don’t know, honestly. It just seems to fit the best so I’m going with it.”

“Does that mean that none of us are cis?” Keith asked, and Pidge startled.

“You’re trans?” she asked.

Keith nodded. “Trans guy.”

After coming out to an entire class of people, most of which were cis, coming out to another trans person was easy.

“Oh my god, none of us are cis!” Pidge said, giddy.

“Maybe it’s a requirement for flying a lion?” Shiro piped up, unexpectedly. Lance pumped his hand up in the air.

“Fuck yeah! We’re Voltrans, defenders of the universe!”

They laughed and headed back inside, and Lance jokingly asked Allura if only trans people could form Voltron. Allura frowned in confusion.

Altea, apparently, had no such thing as an ‘assigned gender at birth’.

Lance’s grin grew wider, and before long, Keith found himself explaining the gender politics of Earth to an alien princess from a dead planet.

This was his life now, and honestly, he’d never been happier.

///

Keith was twenty-five when they finally landed back on Earth, after defeating Zarkon. He was also twenty-five when he looked a ‘feminist’ in the eye who’d told him that she was so glad that “not one, but two girls on Team Voltron!” and said “I really hope you meant Allura and Pidge with that.”

She turned red, and he’d walked away, not even bothering to look back.

///

Keith was thirty when he was visiting the Garrison for a short time, and he found someone with long, curly black hair, deep brown skin, muscular arms, a square jaw, a flat chest, and an awkward smile approaching him.

“I’m trans,” were the first things out of her mouth, and she immediately hid her face and groaned.

Keith smiled.


End file.
